


Where I Left You

by JohnlockAndATardis



Series: Ivory Shadows - Universe [2]
Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ivory Shadows, But not how you think, Fairies, Ivory Shadows AU, Magic is Real, Mentions of TANIS, Platonic Relationships, fae
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 06:42:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6894226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnlockAndATardis/pseuds/JohnlockAndATardis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Alex was going to take a guess at how the night was going to end up, she probably wouldn't have said that she and the esteemed Richard Strand would have ended up wandering through what looks like a page out of a strange, fantastical comic book. </p><p>-</p><p>Alex and Strand are lost, and they find themselves in a place that Alex has only ever dreamt of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What May Come...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [E_Salvatore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/E_Salvatore/gifts).



> This work is a companion to Ivory Shadows. Thanks so much for reading!

     They’d been driving for hours, and Alex was exhausted. She and Strand had just spent a day driving around the nameless Northern California countryside in search of a mysterious story of a ghost town with drawings of shadowy men. Instead of finding this town -real or imagined, she wasn’t certain- they had popped a tire, gotten lost twice, and had gone through more picturesque postcard towns than Alex had previously known to exist. That was exactly where they were now, in one of those little towns with dusty glass windows and ancient apartment buildings over what is now the optometrist’s or the local pizza place. They’d stopped for gas at the only station in the town, right on the corner of the only proper red light there was in the small square of land someone had once thought to name a village. She’d left Strand to fuel up while she had gone in to pay and buy snacks, a task she had trusted Strand with only once (she wouldn't be making that mistake again). When she found her way back with a few bags of chips, cold drinks and two small wraps from the in-store deli, she discovered Strand had slipped into the seat she’d previously occupied, and was now waiting for her. As she slipped into the passenger’s side, his head raised.

     “I thought you could use a break.” He smiled, and Alex could not help but to return the amiable gesture. She’d been driving for god knows how long, and her leg was starting to get a cramp. The podcast host took a moment to stretch her legs, kicking her feet up onto the dash where her sneakers rested pleasantly. Her eyes drifted shut as they pulled out, the falling sun warmed her skin, and by the time they reached the next town she was already fast asleep.

     Alex knew something was wrong when she awoke. She’d jolted out of a deep and vaguely pleasant dream involving (strangely enough) the childhood ice skating team. When her eyes opened she found herself draped in a length of indeterminate fabric with a familiar, driftwood and earthy musk, a pair of deep blue eyes darting occasionally from the white lines in the road to the ones that sprouted upon her brow. It was Richard’s jacket, she realized with a start, that draped her flesh to keep her warm. As her surprise faded she nosed into the high but otherwise understated collar, capturing the familiarity of memories she now only just has. There was something comforting about the way that it covered her, about the knowledge that he must've at some point slowed to place the fabric about her, to keep her warm and safe. Remaining well contained under fabric which draped rather loosely over her much smaller frame, her head popped out to glance about, fixing her eyes upon the roadway.

     “Mmn…” Alex stifled a yawn into her hand. “Where are we?”

    Strand glanced down at the paper she only now noticed was propped precariously against the the dash. His lips twisted into a frown that sent Alex sitting upwards abruptly. If she were a few inches taller the action would have caused her to smack her head upon the visor that had at some point fallen down to have blocked the sun as she slept. Alex pushed it back up, focusing her eyes on Strand. The doctor looked, to say the least, nervous, though if she were searching for a stronger word Alex could confidently state that he was perplexed.

     “Richard?” She spoke slowly, soothingly. “Where are we?”

     An undignified redness creeped up the back of his neck and Alex sat back, running a hand through her hair. “How long have we been lost?”

     “An hour,” Strand begrudgingly answered. An hour. She could work with an hour.

     “Right. Pull off, let's switch spots. You can sleep for a bit and I'll get us back on course.”

    He appeared to want to protest, his lips parted in that way where he was preparing to argue her point, but his mouth promptly shut. Strand pulled his expression into a tight frown that fell into a quiet sigh. They drove like that, in their silence through the night for a small while, until they reached a point in the road where the car could safely pull off without fear of running into a deep ditch. A dense fog had picked up as they'd went, and when Alex popped open her door to step out, she found herself washed over in a blast of chilly air as she stepped through the clouds. She shivered, her hands feeling at her side for the door. When her fingers grasped no purchase upon the vehicle’s side, she turned. It was gone, the car completely disappeared and the fog now so thick that she felt almost suffocated by it.

     “Doctor Strand?” Alex’s voice was anxious, her eyes searching to-and-fro through the dense coverage. “Doctor Strand!”

     A sudden pressure appeared at her shoulder. The journalist gasped, spun around to glance upon Richard Strand’s face. He was still frowning, a burrowing bewilderment lingering behind the frames of his glasses in the rich pools of his currently puzzled blue eyes, the sort of thing one could only truly detect if they had spent some time with him. And she had, despite their having known one another for less than a year. Her days and nights were consumed by Strand, her mind by the essence of him. By his theories on the universe and the nature of humanity, but his everlasting, frustrating and yet comforting doubt, by the words that he spoke wich rang their familiar mantra over and over again in her head. _Apophenia. Apophenia. Apophenia._ She must stand to remember that none of this is truly real.

     Except…

     Except they were driving down a suddenly foggy road at night, when they’d stepped out from their car and found it suddenly gone. Alex could not help but shiver. The entire thing was eerie, and had no sense to it. How could an entire car, weighing at least a ton, suddenly disappear? The idea of magic entered her conscious, followed by the thought that perhaps she should put the question to Strand, but she pushed both away as one does as wild beast. Richard was in no position to create an answer that neither of them had, and magic simply couldn't be possible. Not now, not tonight. She preferred to leave her demons and demonic chanting to the daylight hours.

     “Come on,” Alex suggested, and she tentatively reached for Doctor Strand’s shirt sleeve as a child might, pulling him delicately after herself. “Let's go see if we can find a house.”

     At the sound of her voice, Richard seemed to come back to himself. He glanced down to the journalist, dressed in her sensible but altogether not entirely warm clothing. Reaching for the jacket Alex still held, he draped it gently over her shoulders and would nod, satisfied with his actions. “Lead the way, Miss Reagan.” She couldn't be certain, but it appeared there was a certain softness in his voice, one that she met with a faint nod as she began to guide him along the road. The grip she had dropped, and Alex would draw his jacket tighter around herself, feeling dwarfed by its tall size in comparison to her figure. Night air filtered through her clothes, a damp chill pressing against her as she walked.   
“Charlie and I once were lost in the fog,” Strand confessed softly to her, breaking the quiet _thud-tap-thud-tap_ of their shoes against the blacktop. Alex turned her head, unable in any way to convey the expressions of both shock and gratitude running through her.

     “What happened?” The journalist and podcast host could only question in response, puzzling this out. Richard had never been the most forthcoming with the truth of his family, understandably so, and Alex had always felt as if she was dragging him over hot coals to earn an answer. She was tentative with him now, soft spoken. Strand, to her surprise, provided a wry smile.

     “Charlie was four. We were just coming back from quite the long day - she’d wanted to go to a museum, had been begging me all week. I indulged her, as I often did those days. She’d fallen asleep while I was driving, and had been making strange mumbling sounds as children do. I’d gotten caught up in listening to her -it had sounded as if she’d been having a conversation with herself, and I couldn't help but listen- when a sudden pop and hiss had rocked our car. It had been a nail in the road, lodged into our tire fairly deep. I'd the advantage then of knowing exactly where we were, but the night was still rather cold and excessively dark. I carried Charlie the whole way, until we reached a gas station where I could call to have the car towed.”

    Alex paused briefly, trying to contrive in her mind this situation. It all seemed so bizarre to her, the concept of Richard Strand as a young father with a doting daughter whose whims he would always supply with that which was needed to make them reality. The image too of a young Charlie Strand was hard to conceive. Charlie was two years shy of Alex’s own age -which put Alex as the younger- and the journalist had only known her as a headstrong woman, stubborn and determined, and not altogether fond of her father. A pang of pity ran through Alex. What that must have been like for Strand, she could not imagine. How does one lose their wife and daughter in the period of a week and not suffer from a crippling depression which claims the whole of their person? She tried for a smile that would prove sympathetic, her expression gentle. “You must have been a great father.”

     “Clearly not great enough,” Strand bitterly replied. It was an obvious end to the conversation, and Alex fell silent, no room to reply.

     They walked in a heavy, unpleasant silence, Alex searching for something to say, some reply which would make him feel better. But she was grasping at straws, searching as she had for an explanation as to what exactly had happened to their car. Eventually she let the quiet claim her, and followed Strand along the road.

     There was no way that she could know how long they walked, but it was some time before a light began to cut through the fog, a faint rainbow array which dotted her vision colorfully, making her think for more than a moment that perhaps she was hallucinating. The effect was not lost when the fog broke, revealing a broad sight before her. Set back like the grounds of a fair over a sudden departure from a road she hadn't noticed had become one of dirt, colorful structures rose at varying heights off the ground of a large and otherwise bare field. Beyond the near endless length she could she the shadows of magnificently tall trees which were bathed in the light of these innumerable tents and stalls. Alex came to a full halt when she saw all which lay before her, heart thumping heavily into her throat in an insistence that it be set free.

      “An odd place to have a carnival,” Strand commented lightly beside her, as though he could somehow be truly unbothered by the sheer strangeness of this unusual place. Alex frowned and bit her lips, wrapping herself into her companion’s coat, arms about her own frame. The journalist felt both an urge to turn around and her natural desire to continue forward, to see through this journey which would lead her into what was certainly the unknown. In the end curiosity overcame fear, and she set forward, Doctor Strand in tow.


	2. ...May Go

     The moment they entered the grounds, everything shifted. A sudden warmth overcame her, and Alex felt a strange sense of comfort wash over her skin. It was such an all-encompassing experience that it took her several moments before she noticed what it was that had Strand on her left gaping foolishly. The booths nearest them, set up in the traditional carnival style, were worked by creatures of a sort she had never known. A blue scaled being nearest to Strand was beckoning to them both with bright orange talons, while at her left a beautiful and shimmering silver-skinned woman enticed them forward to taste what looked like candied apples. Some part of her brain registered that she should be afraid, that she should flee, but the other pieces soon silenced that. Alex came forward to the woman, glancing down at the apples. They were glittering and glimmering, the most fantastical treat she had ever set her eyes on, with thick candy shells oozing the colors of the cosmos. The woman who manned the booth pressed a stick into her hand, and Alex bent her head to take a deep bite. The sweet candy skin was soft beneath her teeth, and tore away to reveal luscious golden flesh better than any she had ever tasted before.

     “Alex.” Strand’s voice was rife with nerves as it cut through the quiet sounds of a fair. The journalist turned, dabbing at a bit of the sweet shell that had caught the edge of her lips. Her brow arched, noting his concerned appearance. “Perhaps you shouldn't eat that.”

      Alex frowned. She knew he was right of course… After all, this was all quite strange. But it was also so fantastical too. It was like her father’s stories, one of his tales about the strange flea markets and the fairy-like creature he’d always sworn she would play with in their little suburban back yard. Alex’s gaze would cast upon the treat in her hand and she held it out in offering to him, wearing as innocent an expression as she could. Strand sighed, but gave no further protest as she took another bite, and they continued on walking.

     “What do you suppose this place is?” Alex questioned Strand, nibbling again at her apple. He would glance about them, at the booth where hovering glass orbs were being marketed at prices in coins she had never heard of. Strange people in varying degrees of peculiar costumes would walk about and mingle, goliaths who stood ten feet tall or greater and little men at no more than twelve inches who had to scurry to avoid being trampled.

     “I have no idea,” Strand confessed. “It's possible we’re sharing a hallucination of some sort.”

     “Right.” Alex laughed. “We must have ate some bad food at that gas station and now we’re both seeing the same exact thing. I imagine we’re both stumbling around foolishly at some poor town’s annual festival.” She chuckled at the glare Strand attempted to throw her way, completely benign. “And you would be the one babbling about apophenia,” she softly added. If Strand had actually heard her comment, he was doing a fine job of masking it.

     They wandered together through the various stalls and booths, gazing at the curious creatures who worked them. A figure Alex could only describe as having the head of a massive, glittering fly and the body -queerly enough- of a lizard was buzzing to them in a perfectly understandable foreign language about some game called Whegzendemon, where they would earn a prize if they could pick out which one of his forms was the real one. His body had stretched and split then into ten identical figures, but Strand had quickly tugged Alex away before she could come any closer. A few booths down a canopy of sheer red held a woman with sixteen limbs and fuscia skin that swore she could read the future. Doctor Strand had huffed impatiently about charlatans and their tricks, but Alex had found herself perfectly enchanted with the woman and had insisted she be allowed to sit for a session. The creature -who had named herself a Sedecameld from the curious land of Tryffe, had welcomed Alex kindly into her tent and had taken the journalist’s two hands into four of her own, promptly and rather cheerily proclaiming that she would meet a horrible end at the hands of a beast called the Sluagh. Alex had shivered and removed her hands from the other’s tent as quickly as she could. Strand had only further unkind words to say.

     The further into the curious fairgrounds they wandered, the more sparse became the population. Tents were fewer and much further in between, and Alex could note that most of those walking the field had not dared to venture so far. There was something eerie about this rising quiet, about how the grass had begun to grow thicker, and how the darkness seemed ever darker, somehow. They were approaching something strange, something ominous, and though now Alex felt every fibre of her being tugging her backwards, she refused to halt. Even as the trees cast strange shadows and their enormous roots crept like horrible fingers towards her, the journalist refused to give pause. She would see this through to whatever strange end, for she knew somehow that she must.

     Her labor was rewarded what was either hours or minutes later, Alex was unsure. She -with the reluctant figure of Doctor Strand trailing behind after her- had traversed through the curious shadows and past only the bare few additional booths, until they had come together to a stop before a massive structure. It was composed of heavily draping cloth extending some twenty feet into the air, and stood at the base of a vast tree which broke open heaven and space with its size, branches casting out miles on each size. Alex felt her heart pounding again, and she turned back to look at Strand in the first real moment of pause she’d had all that time. But he wasn't there. In fact there wasn't anything at all behind her but the vast nothingness that was the very and of the universe. She looked again at the tent, at the tree, at the stars so large and so vivid under a midnight sky, and knew all at once that only she could venture forward.

     The journalist took a step. Then another. And another, until the world split open beneath her feet, cracking with a horrible cry. She tumbled forward and catapulted, careening into the tangible darkness which tangled itself about her. For millennia Alex fell, as the entire universe lived and died a thousand times, until she was brought back to that same moment in time, and her knees landed with a thud on the cold floor of a massive temple. She was knelt before some sort throne, fit for a creature much larger than she, though the being who sat in it was no greater in size than herself. It was cloaked in the fabric of time, robes formed of the planets and their suns, of entire galaxies. The creature had no name, no race, no gender. It watched her. Alex watched back. For a time that was all for they to do. She stared and she watched, it stared and it watched, and they understood one another. Then, in a voice like a memory, the creature uttered one word. Just one word. A name.

     “ _Alexandra._ ”

     She hadn't heard her father speak since he had died, but there was no mistaking the sound.

      _There are wondrous things,_ Alex thought later as she and Strand drove together in their companionable silence, the night bleeding into day. _There are magical things. There are dangerous things. We get what we deserve._


End file.
